#megaraptoran

[beaubees]

Maip Macrothorax

[fungalleech]

Australovenator, inspired by PK Allosaurus jimmadseni! I have a reserve that uses a. jimmadseni as a substitute for this fella so I thought I'd do a piece conflating the two

[zombiethethinker]

Today’s sketches

[yee-qi]

a new perspective...check out #perspectives for more of this journey through evolution!

"Bite Worse Than the Bark" Maip Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, Chorrillo Formation The sun rises on a new day, bathing the clubmosses and podocarps in light. It's springtime, and the days are getting longer again. The frogs are croaking, the mammals are emerging, the turtles are basking, and the birds have new young. Sometime in the next five hundred thousand years, disaster will strike. But today is not that day. Maip macrothorax is the apex predator of southern South America. Ten meters long, it takes on the name of a malicious Aonikenk figure. The biggest of all megaraptorans, Maip would have had dexterous forelimbs (for a theropod dinosaur, at least) as well as huge knife-like claws on its hands, allowing it to grapple prey and create big, gashing wounds while doing so. There are two juvenile Maip in this picture, and they have fucked up big time by blundering into the territory of an unrelated adult. Like in many apex predators today, such an interaction would likely be hostile. Being relatively small in their younger state, I've also interpreted these guys as being capable of scaling trees when small, like black bears. Also, the juveniles have blue eyes here while the adult's are oranger! As a southern region, the Chorrillo formation would have been temperate and humid. The plants show similar cloud forest ecosystems, but the area doesn't seem to have been high-altitude. Alongside the Maip are a cast of other, smaller characters. Meiolaniid turtles existed back then (and went extinct sooooo close to the modern day, RIP), and of course there are enantiornithines like Yatenavis (one of the ones here has a little beggy fledgeling), as well as frogs and mammals of the time (such as Magallanodon under the rocks, one of the larger kinds of Gondwana). Another goal of mine was to draw a Mesozoic piece with no ferns in it! The ground is dominated by magnoliids and other primitive angiosperms as shrubs and small trees, podocarps and herbaceous conifers, as well as a majority clubmoss cover. Next up will be the first Paleogene piece! Stay tuned!

[swedebeast]

Maip macrothorax, by Somniosus Insomnius.

[chameleocoonj]

late posting, more chompy boys :)

[ppaleoartistgallery]

#Paleostream 21/12/2024

here's yesterday's #Paleostream sketches!!! (late post because i had to leave early for a Christmas party)

yesterday we drew Parapuzosia, Aerosteon, Carinodens, and Perucetus

[randomanimaloftheday]

Day 287#: Fukuiraptor kitadaniensis

Today's animal of the day is Fukuiraptor kitadaniensis!

Image credit: Maru_Ko

Named after the Fukui Prefecture of Japan, this mid-sized theropod dinosaur lived during the Early Cretaceous period in what is now Japan. Its remains were first discovered in the Kitadani quarry (which is where its species name comes from) and consisted of a partial skeleton of what was believed to be an individual that was not yet fully grown. This specimen was estimated to have been around 14 ft long and would have weighed approximately 386 lb when it was still alive.

Image credit: prehistoric-wildlife.com (Darren Pepper)

Since then, many other sub-adult and juvenile Fukuiraptors have been discovered in the same quarry, including the femur and a handful of other bones described in 2006 that belonged to a super small baby Fukuiraptor that was less than a quarter of the size of the first specimen discovered. While this has helped give paleontologists a good idea about the growth cycle of Fukuiraptor, to my knowledge, no adult specimens of this species have been unearthed yet. However, based on what is known about this species and the growth rates of other closely related dinosaurs, a study in 2010 theorized that the adults could grow to around 16 ft long.

Image credit: Gallimimus wikipedista.

Despite its name, Fukuiraptor was not a Dromaeosaur, like Velociraptor and Utahraptor were. Instead, it belonged to a clade of theropods known as the Megaraptorans. When the namesake genus for this group, Megaraptor, was first discovered, its large hand claws were originally thought to be a giant version of the iconic sickle-shaped toe claw of a dromaeosaur, hence their name. However, where exactly this group of theropods fits on the dinosaur family tree is a bit of a mystery. After it was discovered that they aren't actually "true" raptors, they were then thought to be relatives of Allosaurus, and then they were reclassified as early Tyrannosauroids, and then they were reclassified AGAIN as Allosauroids. There's also a good chance that they are just their own unique type of theropod. I've actually covered a handful of other Megaraptoran dinosaurs before, though strangely, I haven't actually done Megaraptor itself yet. There was the newly described Joaquinraptor that I covered during Dino December on day 181#, and the first ever animal of the day I ever did was Australovenator, which is actually Fukuiraptor's closest known relative.

Image credit: Mario Lanzas

Like all the other Megaraptorans, Fukuiraptor would have been a swift predator with long, curved claws on its hands, which it would've used to help grasp its prey. It would have lived alongside, and probably hunted, the herbivorous Fukuisaurus, as well as sauropod dinosaurs like Fukuititan and Koshisaurus, a smaller theropod known as Fukuivenator, and even a currently undescribed dinosaur that might be a type of therizinosauroid!

Image credit: Timothy J. Bradley (Jurassic Park Institute)

Also, just saying as someone who used to play Jurassic World Alive a lot, their Fukuiraptor design SUCKS! Not only is it super ugly, but the designers must've just heard its name and assumed it was a dromaeosaur because they gave it a toe-claw, which Fukuiraptor did not have in real life. I was going to screenshot a pic to show you how ugly it is, but I haven't played it in over a year and it just wouldn't load. Also, turns out Ludia is using AI for some of the loading screen images, which I don't support at all. So, instead here's a lovely illustration of Fukuiraptor from the old Jurassic Park Institute website, which was created by a human artist named Tim Bradley.